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The fan mail I get from kids are asking me questions which they do not ask their mothers and fathers. Because if they had, why write to me, a perfect stranger?

Maurice Sendak

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Maurice Sendak
Age: 83 †
Born: 1928
Born: June 10
Died: 2012
Died: May 8
Artist
Cartoonist
Graphic Designer
Illustrator
Painter
Screenwriter
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Maurice Bernard Sendak
Father
Mothers
Write
Mail
Stranger
Mother
Questions
Kids
Asking
Writing
Fans
Asks
Perfect
Fathers

More quotes by Maurice Sendak

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I'm not jaded. I never have been jaded. I've always been surprised at my success. I've always enjoyed it.
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My father could be very witty, even if the humor was always on the darker side of irony.
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Kids don't know about best sellers. They go for what they enjoy. They aren't star chasers and they don't suck up. It's why I like them.
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When you hide another story in a story, that’s the story I am telling the children.
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There's a mystery there, a clue, a nut, a bolt, and if I put it together, I find me.
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I've always loved pigs: the shape of them, the look of them, and the fact that they are so intelligent.
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Children do live in fantasy and reality they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do.
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One of the few graces of getting old - and God knows there are few graces - is that if you've worked hard and kept your nose to the grindstone, something happens: The body gets old but the creative mechanism is refreshed, smoothed and oiled and honed. That is the grace. That is what's happening to me.
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And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.
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As an aspiring artist, you should strive for originality of vision. Have something to say and a fresh way of saying it. No story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it’s not the work of the imagination.
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I think people should be given a test much like driver's tests as to whether they're capable of being parents! It's an art form. I talk a lot. And I think a lot. And I draw a lot. But never in a million years would I have been a parent. That's just work that's too hard.
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I don't know how to write a children's book.
Maurice Sendak
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Oh, please don't go — we'll eat you up — we love you so!
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I mean, being a child was being a child, was being a creature without power, without pocket money, without escape routes of any kind. So I didn't want to be a child.
Maurice Sendak
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Emeralds,' said the rabbit. 'Emeralds make a lovely gift.
Maurice Sendak
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If you're making it up, make it up good. And then believe in what you made up.
Maurice Sendak
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My father belonged to a Jewish social club.
Maurice Sendak
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A book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful. Even as a kid, my sister, who was the eldest, brought books home for me, and I think I spent more time sniffing and touching them than reading. I just remember the joy of the book, the beauty of the binding. The smelling of the interior. Happy.
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In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. There's a cruelty to childhood, there's an anger.
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I feel it in me like a woman having a baby, all that life churning inside me. I feel it every day it moves, stretches, yawns. It's getting ready to be born. It knows exactly what it is.
Maurice Sendak